The power plane of a circuit board can accommodate several voltage sources, which supply power to the elements of the circuit board. The power plane may be constructed by dividing a large conductor into several distinct, non-shorting regions, where each region connects a specific voltage source to components of the board. Unfortunately, a given voltage source may provide power to many locations on the board. This makes power plane design difficult. Manually determining a good choice of the non-shorting regions is time-consuming, and can be error prone. Distinct conductors on a power plane are also referred to as power nets. If there are any shorted nets on the PCB power layer, then the board is useless and must be scrapped.
Automated trace routing is another well-known method for connecting nodes in a circuit board with electrical conductors or traces. This method does not attempt to create traces with a large conductor area. On a power plane, where electrical current is high, however, a large conductor area is desirable or necessary, so as to reduce power loss.